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Cisco XDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
23rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco XDR is 1.8%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Aruna Udawatte - PeerSpot reviewer
Network visibility improves with centralized maintenance and responsive support
The single point of maintenance and dashboards are the strong points of Cisco XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ). The visibility of the network is the main valuable feature. Customers frequently request features that offer better system visibility. The solution also offers automated response capability, which I would rate around eight out of ten.
Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"I appreciate the granularity of what I get from Cisco XDR the most."
"The features of Cisco XDR benefit my company since time is money. When outages happen and when a customer can't reach the internet, they get agitated. Therefore, the quicker we can mitigate an issue, our customers get happier in a quicker fashion."
"The feature I appreciate the most about Cisco XDR is the reliability."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"An engineer can live-monitor all the flow happening in real-time. This would help us a lot while investigating a case, and it would even help us with preventive actions."
"The tool helps with infrastructure, application, and network monitoring."
"Provided that the report is prebuilt and I can find what I am looking for, the reporting is the most valuable feature in this solution."
"The features that I have found most valuable in QRadar are its data enrichment, use case creations, and adding references - those kinds of features are very good. Also QRadar's event filtration and device integration are perfect."
"Search capabilities are sufficient for most tasks."
"QRadar UBA's most valuable feature is the risk rating of users depending on their behavior."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to rectify a situation involving any anomalies expeditiously."
"This solution has allowed us to correlate logs from multiple sources."
 

Cons

"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"Cisco XDR can be improved by addressing the upfront cost."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"When we first started with Cisco XDR in August, everybody was having issues. There were three people in our organization, including me, who couldn't even log in to Cisco XDR."
"My only complaint about Cisco XDR is related to licensing, which is complicated."
"There are a lot of things they are working on and a lot of technologies that are not yet there. They should probably work out a better reserve with their ecosystem of business partners and create wider and more in-depth qualities, third-party tools, and add-ons. These things really give immediate business value. For instance, there are many limitations in using SAP, EBS, or Micro-Dynamics. A lot of things that are happening in those platforms could also be monitored and allowed from the cybersecurity risks perspective. IBM might be leaving this gap or empty space for business partners. Some larger organizations might already be doing this. It would be very nice if IBM can make some artificial intelligence part free of charge for all current QRadar users. This would be a big advantage as compared to other competitors. There are companies that are going in different directions. Of course, you can't do everything inside QRadar. In general, it might be very good for all players to provide more use cases, especially regarding data protection and leakage prevention. There are some who are already doing some kind of file integrity or gathering some more information from all possible technologies for building anything related to the user and data analysis, content analysis, and management regarding the data protection."
"The reporting system could use some upgrading."
"They have to build more quantitative monitoring, profiling, and make it more predictive."
"The product needs to improve its GUI."
"QRadar UBA only keeps the data for a short while (it's refreshed every five minutes) and would be improved if this were extended to a week or month."
"We need more features in order to create rules to detect or to meet some requirements for other areas, for example, catching the event from other authentication tools."
"IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson could be more user-friendly. You need some skills and understanding of what you're looking at, especially if you're going to draw down specific information."
"The implementation and configuration are not easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing of Cisco XDR is a bit complicated. The cost can depend on what it is, and the process can be a little complicated."
"I would like for them to lower the price."
"There is a license required for this solution. There are some limitations depending on what license you purchase."
"There is a license to use this solution, which is paid annually. However, there are subscription options available."
"You have a one-time payment, and you also can purchase it for one year as a subscription. We have it on-premise, and we have a permanent license for it. We have to pay for the support on a yearly basis. If you compare its cost with Sentinel for one year, QRadar would seem more expensive, but if you compare its cost over five or ten years, Azure Sentinel will be more expensive than QRadar. If you compare its cost with Sentinel for one year, QRadar would seem more expensive, but if you compare its cost over five or 10 years, Azure Sentinel can be more expensive than QRadar."
"It is costlier as compared to the other alternatives available in the market."
"It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
"I think my company pays for the license yearly."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
Costs vary depending on dollar fluctuations. Cisco requires conversion to dollars, which affects the cost compared to local competitors who bill in local currency. Overall, the price is a bit expen...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
An issue that we have with Cisco XDR is the observable list. These observables are basically similar to a chess board where you have a certain number of spots to put pieces. It's the same concept w...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
I use Cisco XDR because I'm a SOC analyst. It's something I use every single day. The majority of my work has been in Cisco XDR looking through incidents, reading reports that it gives, and making ...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.